Avot331

1:
Our mishnah concludes the series which is based on the number 4, and also concludes the sub-series which is concerned with four types regarding various religious activities. Our present mishnah is concerned with the learning process.

2:
Anyone who has ever taught adults will recognize these types. Anyone teaching in a real situation will make comments aside; will make a mistake which has to be corrected; will enter into conversation with a student who has asked a question and so forth. The task of the student is to use his or her intelligence and acumen to know which of all the elements that the teacher has uttered is essential and meaningful to the learning process.

3:
Every university teacher must have come across 'the sponge'. It doesn't matter what the lecturer says, it is all carefully copied down, almost word for word. It matters not whether the lecturer has made a joke, corrected a previous error or patiently answered an inaposite question – all of it makes its laborious way into the student's notebook. Teachers also make mistakes. (Very early on in my career a head teacher taught me a very valuable lesson: "it is natural for a teacher to make a mistake; it is sinful to leave it on the blackboard after leaving the classroom! Always clean the board before you leave.") The Talmid-Ĥakham – the student of the sage – who absorbs every inanity that his teacher utters can never himself become a sage. (It is very unfortunate that the resurgence of a kind of ultra-orthodoxy has also created a following of sponges for whom every word of the 'Rebbe' is essential Torah. No good can come of it.)

4:
The "funnel" is the exact opposite. Not only, like the "sponge", is everything absorbed, but everything is lost from memory in equal measure. Nothing at all is retained, neither the inanities nor the essential material. The Talmid-Ĥakham – the student of the sage – who retains nothing of what his teacher utters can never himself become a sage.

5:
There is yet another unsuccessful student. This student is likened to the strainer that is used when serving wine. The 'strainer' recognizes that not everything the teacher says is of equal value, but makes a crucial error of judgement: what is essential teaching goes through the strainer and is lost and the student is left with the lees which are of no use at all.

6:
So, the successful Talmid-Ĥakham is the one who has the intellectual ability to recognize what is essential and to consign to oblivion that which need not be remembered. When one remembers that in Tannaïtic times all learning had to be retained in memory it is not surprising that this student is recognized as being the prize student who will, one day, himself become a sage.

Mishnah thriteen of this chapter was concerned with the giving of Tzedakah, charity. Nehama Barbiru has several questions concerning the more dubious aspects of this mitzvah. I shall try to answer at least some of them here.

Nehama asks:

• A person works a number of hours each day at regular work and afterwards stands at the corner of the street or next to the synagogue and begs for charity when it is quite clear that there is no reason why he should not longer hours.
• A person declares that they devote their whole life to Torah study and then goes begging on behalf of a needy family / a Yeshivah / etc.
• A homeless person stands begging at the intersection but most, if not all, the money he collects goes to someone else, who is making him do this by threatening his life if he does not hand over everything he has received.

What do the sages have to say about such instances in which the 'charity' objective is not pure?

I respond to the first instance:

We are not God: we cannot plumb the depths of the human soul and know for certain what a person's needs are and why they act the way they do. We are told that we must never turn a beggar down, even if we have serious doubts as to his authenticity. In order to extricate ourselves from such a dilemma the sages suggest that we always have in our pockets a number of coins of very small nominal value. When we pass a beggar who does not seem to us to possess bona fides we can then give him a shekel or a dime in order to fulfill the mitzvah.

I shall try, God willing, to answer more of Nehama's questions in our next shiur.